Theodore Taylor was born in North Carolina and has lived and worked in many places around the world. He began writing at the age of 13 for the Portsmouth, Va., Star and at 17 left home to join the Washington, D.C., Daily News as a copyboy. Two years later he was writing radio network sports for NBC. His first children's book, The Cay, won 11 literary awards and is now in print in the United States and 16 foreign countries. The Cay (1969) became a Universal film starring James Earl Jones. In 1993, Timothy of the Cay, prequel-sequel to the original story of survival and prejudice, was published, winning the ALA Best Book Award. The Bomb, based on personal experience during the 1946 Bikini atom bomb tests, won the Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction. Author of 52 published works, half for adults, he has also written many short stories and novelettes. Taylor's hobbies are foreign travel and ocean fishing. His wife, Flora, assists in research projects. They reside in a house in the woods in Laguna Beach, California, with a yellow Labrador, Hyra.
